


Season 2 Episode 3

by cherryblur



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: 1980s, Drug Use, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Murder, Mutilation, Physical Disability, Power Imbalance, Rape/Non-con Elements, Stockholm Syndrome, Threats of Violence, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-12-25 06:49:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18255974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryblur/pseuds/cherryblur
Summary: “You’re so lucky I didn’t put a bullet through that pretty little head of yours,” Josh hums.Tyler just giggles and shoves another spoonful of mayonnaise in his mouth because oh, how he has his own bitter plans.





	Season 2 Episode 3

**Author's Note:**

> tags
> 
> elements are taken from the song titled 
> 
> by glass animals

“Tyler, baby doll, what’s got you in such a fuss?”

Everything. _Everything_ because he’s paranoid and every little thing is a danger to him.  
“I feel they’ll come back,” He blinks. Josh notices how naked he is underneath the worn yellow hoodie he wears. 

“Who?”

Tyler brings his knees up to his chest. “The ones that broke my feet. They live in the walls, Josh.” 

Josh shakes his head. “Are you high?” 

“ _No._ ”

“Right,” He sets down groceries and begins to unpack them in the banana yellow fridge in the room next door. “Who broke your feet?” 

Tyler’s response is muffled. 

Josh sighs and finishes the groceries before he attempts at going back to the living room. Tyler was a special case, for sure.  
The brunette is buried into himself, crooked feet stuck out beneath the hoodie sleeves covering his legs. 

”I don’t think anyone broke your feet,” He continues, head cocked to the side because Tyler is speaking in his unintelligible mumbling voice that only comes out when he’s done with a subject. It’s annoying.

A poof of brunette hair sticks out under his hood and Josh pulls it back.  
Tyler searches his face with wide eyes. He beckons him closer with a finger, then steals the cigarette from behind his ear. 

”I bought you a whole pack,” Josh frowns, pointing towards the unopened package of Camels on the side table.  
“These ones smell like you,” Tyler says through the filter between his teeth. Josh lights him up and he blows smoke through the slit of his mouth.

”What is that smell?” Josh inquires, busying himself with a tireless and never-ending clean up of the living room.

”Coconut,” Tyler answers. He watches Josh empty the ash trays and sweep empty chip bags and bottles into the trash can. There’s soggy cereal bowls and leftover breakfast plates covering the coffee table, next to all the scraped out mayonnaise jars and spilled nail polish.

Josh nods and gives up after digging away at the first layer of garbage. He sits down on the once-vibrant orange couch and Tyler is automatically grooved into his side, legs tucked uncomfortable underneath him while he lays his head down onto a warm lap.

Josh rubs his bare feet and feels the crooked bones beneath the skin.

Tyler points at the crackling television, the antenna poking out of it leaned almost off the faux wooden box. “Watch. This is my favorite commercial.”

Josh takes his eyes off those twisted toes and gazes upon an advertisement for women’s deodorant. It shows ballerinas twirling and dancing freely while a voice-over talks about the benefits of their long-lasting antiperspirant.

”They’re so pretty,” Tyler breathes and cigarette smoke falls from his mouth and nose like the carbon dioxide he breathes out regularly.  
“I want to be a ballerina, Josh.”

There’s an audible scoff that they both pretend didn’t happen.  
”You can’t,” Josh answers plainly.

”Why?” Tyler questions.

The answer he gets is simple.  
“You’re broken.”

Broken?  
He looks down at his feet, his inward-pointing feet that make him stumble and trip. His toes are twisted, yet the nails are painted a perfect subtle white. He glares at them.

”My _feet_ are broken,” He says out loud. Josh nods in affirmation.  
“Why?”

”You were born that way,” Is his other answer he sticks with. It’s the answer he’s always stuck with, every single time Tyler would question his deformities and spit insults at whoever did it to him.  
“That’s bullshit,” He spits to that. He sits up and fizzles his cigarette out on the worn leather and it burns a hole right through the material. “Someone broke me. They broke me, didn’t they?”

Josh scowls. “You broke yourself, Tyler.”

Tyler swallows and chews on a thumbnail.  
“How?”

Josh cards his fingers through unwashed brunette curls. “By being born, sweetheart. S’not your fault, so lay back down and relax.”

Tyler’s eyes cloud with hurt and he pouts, really _pouts_ because he just _cant help it?_  
It’s not his FAULT?  
Who’s fault was it then?

There has to be someone to blame, he thinks. It can’t be his parents. They couldn’t have made him like this.

He burrows back into Josh’s embrace and pinpoints his pain on God himself.

•

Josh arrives to see Tyler dancing the next day.

He’s in his own world, crooked feet twirling about the dusty wood floor below him.  
Josh watches, leaning against the frame of the front door with an intruiged smile on his face.

The brunette’s eyes are closed, his mouth parted and chin up in just the slightest. He’s in bliss, with an old vocal record spinning on the player in the corner orchestrating his movements.

He wears a soft thing, flowered and long. It hangs off his body in rivulets of see-through fabric and clings to the most important curves.  
When he moves it screams power and elegance.

”Its beautiful,” Josh finally says.

Tyler’s movements stutter and he turns abruptly. His feet go back to their original place, bowed and duck-like. The bottoms of them are dirtied black.

He flushes all the way down to his chest, the bar piercings through his nipples gleaming in the lazy afternoon light. He blinks in surprise and the record stops itself after one last chorus. It spins in silence.

”Sorry,” Tyler mumbles.

He should be sleeping, or eating, or resting. He shouldn’t even _try_ to walk without his braces, his mind chides.  
They sit next to the couch, tilted and abandoned.

”Nothing to be sorry about,” Josh murmurs around a cigarette he cups around to light. Tyler has the window open, letting in soft summer breezes that drift along his flowery cardigan. He shouldn’t have the window open.  
He’s not allowed to, especially since he had to pry back the curtains and foil covers shielding him from any natural light. He feels his entire being glow from the warm air and is genuinely surprised Josh isn’t scolding him like he usually does.

He bites his chapped lips, eyes flicking down to his bare legs. Underneath he wears shorts, denim things that hug his waist and tuck over top of a plain black tank that buttons down.

The pale white scars that criss-cross along his thighs are accentuated against his tanned skin. His white painted toenails glimmer with a glittery top coat.

”I didn’t know you had this,” Josh steps closer, fingers trailing along the fabric sleeves dozing off the brunette’s shoulders. “S’pretty.”

Tyler still acts like a scolded child caught doing wrong. “I was just..tired of hoodies.”  
He’s tired of being _helpless_.

Josh nods. “Would you like to go out, Tyler?”  
He breathes heavy with love. It’s a good day. A calm day. Nothing like yesterday, where tension was high and everyone was just a little too tired.

Tyler frowns. “Outside?”

”Yes.”

He stands awkwardly. “I’m allowed to?”  
He gets a nod in response and his heart thumps a little faster.

”Yeah,” He breathes. “Let’s-Let’s go.”

Josh takes his shaky little hand and leads him outside, the palm of his other hand resting gently on the brunette’s back. He’s just a little wobbly sometimes.

He’s taken through the creaky back door and down their cement steps until he’s standing in grass.  
So, so much grass.

His eyes widen, big and curious and looking just about everywhere they could. Josh marvels at how excited he seems.  
“Josh,” He breathes, toes digging into the earth below him. “What season is this one?”

”Spring,” Josh replies, soft and warm like the air surrounding them.

Tyler kneels down with his cardigan spread around him and starts to cry. It’s so beautiful, so elegant and pristine he feels he never wants to leave.  
He sniffs through his tears and feels dandelions with his cracking fingertips. “I love them,” He sobs.  
“Josh,” He hunches over, cheeks red and nose irritated from the pollen and dust. “I love them all. They’re so _real_.”

He breathes real air, big breaths of clean, pure oxygen that fill his lungs in all the right ways.  
The pine trees surrounding their yard tower and create shade in places he wants to run underneath. He wants to live out here, he thinks.

It’s much better than the things he watches on the television. It’s so much closer, so much warmer. Josh had to wait so long before showing him this?

He can’t wait to show Tyler winter.

He watches him become one with nature and times how long they have before he has to be shut back inside.

Tyler can’t even imagine a world so cut off from the outside.  
Then remembers his own life.

•

Josh treats him so nice, he thinks. He’s seated with a bowl of ice cream in his lap and a pair of lips on his cheek.  
He embraces the touches and their noses brush against each other.

He licks pink tinted cream off the back of the spoon with an equally pink tongue. Josh’s eyes follow every movement.

”You’re gorgeous,” He mumbles over the TV.  
Tyler blushes and all Josh can taste is strawberry ice cream for the next few hours.

Will he ever get tired of this?  
Never.

•

Tyler is splayed out, a jar of mayonnaise resting on his stomach and a cigarette stuck lazily between his fingers. A spoon pokes over the rim of the jar and he takes it out, tongue lapping over the metal until it’s clean.

Josh lays beside him and paints his toenails a new shade of baby blue.

Reruns of old cartoons play over the television, grainy and muffled. Tyler swallows another spoonful of mayonnaise and blinks sleepily.  
“Josh.” He runs his tongue over his bottom lip.  
Josh looks up and caps the bottle of polish.

”Hm?” He raises an eyebrow. Tyler takes one last puff off his cigarette before putting it out in the half empty jar. Josh frowns.

”I’d like to go out,” He says slow. “Again. Please.”

Josh sits up and readjusts himself.  
“No.”

”No?” Tyler’s face falls. “Why not?”

Questions, questions, it always felt like he was asking fucking _questions_.

”Too dangerous,” Josh chides. His focus remains on the TV. Tyler sets his dirty feet on the floor and is gently reminded to not smudge the paint.

”What about last time?”

Josh shakes his head. “That was a treat. It was a quiet day that afternoon.”  
That’s a stupid answer, Tyler thinks, but Josh still won’t stop.

”You don’t want to get hurt, do you?” He asks before the brunette can open his mouth to match his disappointed face. “You want to get crippled even more?” He searches his face with dark eyes. “You don’t belong outside, Tyler. I keep you here because I want you to be _safe_. It was risky taking you out there last time, anyway.”

”Safe,” Tyler echoes the most important parts.

He sits with his hands flat on the couch in discontent and Josh hands him another cigarette.

•

Tyler hates when Josh takes his medicine.  
He also hates when he has to take _his_ medicine. The pills that have to be crushed into his food unknowingly or forced down his throat with two fumbling fingers.

Josh’s medicine is probably a lot better.

”So pretty,” He mumbles now, a glass of clear amber liquid painting his lips with a shine when he tips it back.

Is he really? Tyler doesn’t think so. Josh likes to talk him up whenever he gets the chance.

He exists in an essential thump, body moving to the beat of a scratched vinyl bumping fuzzy beats to him. Maybe he’s just tired. His knees hurt, but the band-aids placed upon them make him feel a little better. Josh told him they’d get better.  
“I don’t feel pretty,” He deadpans. Josh takes his tiny white pill with his burning drink and tells him he’s drop-dead gorgeous.

He stands half-naked. Legs bowed into themselves mainly out of embarrassment. Josh’s fingers linger over his bare skin in a slippery fashion that he doesn’t like.  
His eyes don’t leave the full-length mirror leaned against the wall opposite the television; his reflection stares back almost...scared.

It’s that stupid cardigan. Sheer and starting to stick to his sweaty shoulders because Josh’s warm breath is in his ear and he shivers despite the hot blush running down his chest. He knew he shouldn’t have worn it again.

There are fingers hooked in the too-short shorts he wears. “Josh,” He mumbles.  
“You’re high.” Tyler’s medicine makes him sleep and Josh’s makes him laugh.

”Am I?” Josh breathes. He licks his lower lip and curls his body to Tyler’s. “Jus’ the meds. You’re glowing, baby.”  
He says it like the brunette is his pregnant wife, like he’s complimenting a new mother, not a lanky, overfed crippled boy who doesn’t really want this right now.

Tyler nods and makes his bottom lip bleed with crooked teeth. “You love me?” He cocks his head and Josh takes up the space of his neck given to him with a soft mouth and warm palms.

”Always,” Is his drug-induced answer.  
Tyler swallows back his tears and wants to dump all Josh’s medicine down the drain.  
He voices how he’s not really ready for this right now, how he’s just a little too tired, Josh.

But it’s nothing more than a whisper so he assumes he probably deserves whatever comes next.

•

”I don’t want to do this anymore.”  
Tyler sweats on the sticky leather couch and watches his busted up toes twitch to the scratchy beat of the record he has playing.

Josh ignores him.

•

Tyler starts getting restless. He stands at the window, fingers holding their darkened drapes like they’re the only thing keeping him steady.

Josh scolds him sometimes. Leads him away and sits him back down on the couch with arms wrapped around him like a cage.  
Tyler lives with dead doe eyes constantly staring into what he couldn’t have. It’s selfish.

Light is let in sometimes. Natural light, smooth and inviting. His skin gets a light tan from standing in the rays when Josh is gone, so he wears more long sleeves and baggy hoodies. Whenever Josh does see him nude he’s too blazed to notice the change of color.

He wonders if this is a life he should be living, when he’s sat cross-legged on the floor, watching dust float down onto his bruised knees.  
Stuck inside, forced to do nothing but exist and be Josh’s little pleasure.  
He likes it though. It’s fine. He likes it.

He stares out into the greenery that he just can’t touch and picks at the white nail polish chipping on his fingers.

It’s not right, he thinks. He can still walk. He can still move. He’s not all the way crippled.

 _But you could get even more hurt out there_ , the voice familiar to Josh’s in the back of his head tells him.  
The twisted bones in his feet ache in the position they sit in and he swallows thickly.

God made him wrong.

•

Tyler has started to crawl out of his mind.  
He yearns for the outside world. He watches the television describe places he knows he could never travel to, worlds he’d never be able to see.

He licks mayonnaise from his bottom lip and breathes slow. Josh kisses the top of his head and tells him he’s pretty.

Doubtful, really. He’s half-naked, too bored and lazy to try and create an outfit he liked. Instead he wears dirty, ripped jeans and bright red socks that cover his stupid fucking retard feet.

One hand holds the spoon dipping into the mayonnaise jar on his stomach while the other fiddles with one nipple piercing. His fingers roll it in place and he wonders what it’d be like to have long fake nails-acrylics, he thinks they’re called.  
It’d probably sting his skin and pinch the flesh.

He’d want pink ones, razor sharp and thick.

•

Josh walks into a scene of chaos the next day. What he sees is a living room of pure disorder-even more so than usual-and hears quiet humming from the bedroom down the hall.

Tyler is at the bathroom sink, fluttering his eyelashes in the mirror with vain piercing into his eyes as he stares at himself.  
He wears a face of makeshift makeup. There’s crushed food, pens, even other craft supplies Josh didn’t even know they had.

It’s not a bad job, if Tyler says so himself. He doesn’t know why Josh is so mad.

He’s yanked from the bathroom and told never to do anything like that again, to look at the mess he made, to remember what happened last time he wore ‘lady products.’  
He ignores that last part because he doesn’t remember.  
“What are you gonna do?” He replied, black-lined eyes narrowed. Much too brave for a situation like this, and he’s got to know it.

Josh cocked his head, eyebrows raised. “What am I gonna do?”  
He smiled.

He did the thing he knew would _best_ serve as a punishment.

And after that, he was left to clean the bathroom and everything in it.  
He didn’t mind, tidying up was just another thing that kept him sane in this house.

Tyler was left sniffling, bundled on the couch with smeary makeup removed and a cold compress on his right eye.

Josh had hit him again.

”Have you learned your lesson?” He asked softly, fingers carding through Tyler’s dirty chestnut curls.

The brunette nodded in bitter silence and felt a sting when Josh kissed his cheek.

•

“I’ll do it, Josh. I’ll fucking do it, you really think I wont?”

Tyler cracked.

He stands on his uneasy, slanted feet with a butcher knife to his wrist. Josh is a few feet away, looking unamused.  
“Put it down, Tyler.”

”Fuck you.” Tyler presses the blade into his skin just slightly. “You made me do this.” He’s been thinking about this for a while, how he might be able to bargain if his life were on the line.

His heart beats so hard against his chest he feels it might burst out. This stand-off will end with him, he thinks. He’ll finally be free.

He’ll slit his wrists and Josh will watch him die.

Josh instead shifts on his feet and watches nothing happen. He raises his eyebrows and speaks over the buzzing television.  
“Do it, Tyler,” He says. “Does it look like I’m stopping you?”

Tyler’s face starts to fall and he swallows thick. “I will.”  
He won’t.  
He starts to shake, face contorting into a mask of pain. “I will, Josh. I’ll kill myself.”

He feels tears prick at his eyes but he won’t cry, because this is serious. His lip begins to tremble-no, he’s serious and he’s not about to pussy out of this. Josh has pushed him to this point.  
It’s all his fault.

He makes a gesture that signals Tyler to _get on with it._  
Ths brunette begins to cry and takes the knife from his wrist. He holds it out to Josh and his hands shake.

Josh steps up and retrieves it carefully, nimble fingers pressing it back into the knife block without hesitation. Tyler has his bottom lip stuck out while he shakes like a newborn deer.

”C’mere, pup,” Josh coos. He’s got a sobbing, crippled shell of a boy in his embrace, mumbling apologies in his thick stumbling voice.

”How did you know?” He sniffles, fingers digging into Josh’s button-up. “How did you know I wouldn’t do it?”

Josh tips Tyler’s chin up softly. “You’re scared of death, Tyler. You’re scared of leaving me,” His thumb runs along the jagged scar etched into the brunette’s chin.  
“Aren’t you?”

Tyler looks up with tears still welled in his big doe eyes and mouths the word _yes_ before burying his face in sweet-smelling fabric.

•

Josh takes so much of his special medicine that night Tyler feels all the nerves in his body have been snipped clean off.  
He lays cocooned against Josh’s chest and makes sure the tears slipping down his cheeks make no noise when they hit the filthy leather below him.

Josh purrs softly about how beautiful he is and how lucky he is to have him.  
Tyler sniffs and pretends to be asleep.

•

Tyler has a headache. Tyler is sore, Tyler wants to leave this fucking house but he’s just too _fragile._

”I hate this place,” He deadpans, brain pounding while his fingers move to imaginary songs on the couch. This couch. He feels like he’s glued to it.  
He smokes so much he feels dirty. He is dirty. Josh doesn’t care about him.

He’s in the kitchen now, still cleaning.  
“Josh,” Tyler says. The bag of Cheetos on his lap crinkles and he pops his toes to the beat of whatever commercial was playing at the moment.

No reply.

”I’m leaving.” He’s got to keep Josh on his toes, doesn’t he?

There’s a pause. “No you’re not,” Comes from the kitchen.

Tyler sighs because he isn’t, and Josh knows that because there’s a plethora of locks on the door (“to protect you”) that he doesn’t have the key or doesn’t know the combination to.

He’s splayed out, legs spread lazily while he smokes out a pack of cigarettes on the coffee table.  
His lungs feel so blackened he hopes maybe this will just kill him already.

 _Just kill me already,_ he wants to tell Josh.  
_Anything is better than living a life here._

He sticks Cheeto dust-covered fingers in his mouth and sucks the flavor off when Josh walks back in, drying his hands.  
“Anything new on?” He chats, eyes focused on the television.

”You know there isn’t.” Tyler yawns and sticks his orange-tinged tongue out to catch the food caught on his lips.  
“There never is.”

They live in such isolated sadness he feels he’ll never truly feel the light of happiness.

•

Tyler’s caught on quite well.

And now, he’s even smarter than before.

It starts with bored rifling through the closet of the bedroom he wasn’t allowed to be in.  
Files, important papers, bills, mostly.

He’s beginning to become bored, really, eyes flicking lazily over thousands of words he didn’t need to care about.  
His finger catches an envelope, big and orange in color. It looks too important not to flip through.

He’s always been a little too nosy.

Inside he finds hospital records. With his name on them.

Hospital records telling of horrible, mutilated feet crushed to almost nothing. Photos of jagged x-rays that look more like children’s drawings than bones.  
And Josh’s name was printed ever so neatly under the _legal guardian_ patch.

His fingers dig relentlessly, searching for more, craving for more history on what he couldn’t quite remember. He feels like crying but his brain can’t pinpoint the reason behind these emotions.

Josh had lied to him, he knows that for sure. He _wasn’t_ born like this. He knew it. He knew someone fucked him up and left him to trip over his own toes forever.  
He wracks his memories in a desperate attempt to backtrack anything he could. It all comes back blank.

He can’t focus because Josh is opening the front door and he’s scrambling to put everything back where it was supposed to be.  
“Tyler?”

He’s out, limping on his already aching feet with a fake smile plastered on his face.  
“Was in the bathroom,” He lies. Josh nods.

Tyler takes his meds willingly that night because he knows something is bound to happen in his favor.

•

It’s two weeks after he finds the papers that he finally realizes it.  
Josh did this to him.

Josh is the one who crippled him, who crumpled his pretty little feet into oblivion so he could have the power. The pleasure of knowing he was in charge.

He knows it’s true because he finds pictures of the crime scene in that tucked away box filled with hospital records and physical therapy letters that went unread, hospital notes crumpled away.  
He could’ve been fixed, he could’ve learned to walk normal again and maybe have even straightened out his scrunched up feet, but Josh had ignored every attempt at help or care.

The photos are awful.  
He’s crying in them, almost passed out and shrieking at his bloody, horror film-esque feet. Bones poke out from under the skin and stretch it in every which way.  
Blood pools around him and paints his toes red.

He’s hunched over and far gone in the last picture. He recognizes Josh’s boot in the corner of the frame.

He’s so helpless, so small and hunched into himself in the pictures he can’t imagine how being in the moment must have felt.  
Such a shame he can’t remember a stitch of it.

There’s captions scribbled on the back, dates and tiny words in Josh’s handwriting.

 _’89. Tyler’s accident,_ is written on the back of a frame of him, unconscious and drooling on the grungy sidewalk of a neighborhood he didn’t know.

Accident. He chokes on bile rising up his throat. He wishes it were an accident.

He stacks the photos up neatly, tucks everything away and blinks the tears from his eyes.  
He is a victim. Not of God’s wrath, but of a filthy human made by Him.

He prays for forgiveness that night with bruised knees slipping on the dusty wooden floor.

•

”I love you,” He says with the cold, emotionless voice he always wears.  
Josh simply nods and kisses him again.

He’s been so good, really. Very obedient and sweet, always ready to bow under Josh’s power and submit to his dominance.  
He’d win a fucking award for this good of acting, he thinks.

It’s slow. His plan inches along, day by day, every hour closer to when he’ll be _free_.  
But first, confrontation.

”Josh,” He changes into that syrupy sweet voice he knows can change minds. He traces Josh’s jawline with a painted fingernail and feels him breathe soft.

”Why did you lie to me?”

Josh doesn’t take his eyes off the Saturday morning cartoons. “I’ve never lied to you, pup.”  
Tyler sprawls himself out on the couch and rests his head in a warm lap. “But you have. About my feet.”

Fingers card through his filthy hair and he blinks up innocently. “Haven’t you?”

He wiggles his toes the best he can for effect.

”I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tyler,” Josh says in that stern, _I know I’m right_ voice.  
Tyler chews his lip.

”I just,” He lies. “I found a picture under the fridge.” He speaks wistfully and oh so softly.  
Josh perks up.  
“It was of me, and-and I didn’t have bad feet. My toes were so straight, Josh, they were like real ballerina fee-“

”Where is the photo?”

Tyler fiddles with the drawstrings of his sweats. “I don’t remember. It was a few weeks ago.”

There’s a sigh and he waits for the coming information.  
“Maybe I haven’t been..all the way honest with you.”

”Oh?” Tyler cocks his head like this is actual _news_ to him.

Josh frowns. “You weren’t born with your feet messed up like they are. Someone broke them. You were right all along, I just didn’t want to tell you because of how distraught you always became.” He sets his jaw and Tyler knows that’s the only thing he’ll get him to admit.

”Right,” He says. “So you protected me, then, huh? Made me all better.”

”As best I could,” Josh nods.

Tyler yawns and lets his pretty pink tongue wet his bottom lip. Josh leans down to kiss him with rose petals on his breath.  
He smiles.

_You’ll have to try a little harder then, won’t you?_

•

Josh has started to catch on, too.  
Tyler can’t find any of the knives once placed so delicately in the kitchen’s butcher block.  
He can’t find anything sharp, really, and it’s fucking up his plans.

”You think I wanna kill myself?” He asks one night. “S’that why you took the knives away? You think I’m not scared anymore, huh?”

Josh laughs in his face because they both know Tyler’s not looking to kill _himself_ , no.  
He’s got a target.

•

The clock strikes midnight when Tyler feels his hands.  
They’re cold. He must’ve been outside in the chilly night air. He touches and tug on fragile little shoulders until Tyler’s standing, blinking with hatred and scrabbling against his grip.

”Josh,” He hisses. “Let me go. You’re fucking high again.”  
This is the first time he’s retaliated, the first time he’s ever said _no_ verbally.  
Josh doesn’t quite know how to take it.

His hands grow tighter, jaw set and teeth clenched in a hazy aura of dominance. Tyler’s twisted little feet slip on the dirty wooden floor as he struggled for freedom.

”Josh.”  
He’s watching. He’s watching with cold, emotionless eyes that say _I know what you did._  
“Let. Me go.”

Josh’s drug-induced mind pulls the brunette over the threshold of the house, into the dark oblivion that was outside.  
Tyler’s never been outside at night.  
He starts to shiver.

”Why are we out here?” He shrugs his shoulders up in an attempt to make himself warmer. His arms start to ache from the position they sit scrunched up in.

”I should’ve,” Josh shakes his head like he’s confused. “I should’ve done this a long time ago.”

He’s got one hand bunching Tyler’s wrists together while the other reaches behind to his back pocket.

Tyler pales at the pistol being clicked into place and pointed at his forehead.  
“Josh,” He shakes. “Josh, please don’t do this.”  
This wasn’t how his plan was supposed to go at all. He’s not prepared.

”You’ve been nothing but a burden.” Josh is slurring, slowly becoming more sober in the damp air. “I knew I should’ve left you for dead when I broke you.”

It’s the confession Tyler’s been waiting for, and he’s not quite sure if the tears seeping down his face are out of fear or something else connected to what he just heard.  
Mourning, possibly?

”I’m sorry.”

Tyler tries to wriggle himself out of Josh’s grip. Shoulders aching at the position his arms were in.  
Josh’s drunken monologue has allowed him just a second of leeway.

Instead of doing the stupid thing and running-which he already can’t do-he lurches for the gun.  
Josh fires a round that almost hits him dead in the center of his foot.

It’s a struggle, full of hands in faces and kicking limbs until Tyler yanks the firearm from Josh’s unsteady hand.

”You’ve admitted it all,” He laughs and wipes the back of his hand against the blood pouring from a split lip. “Josh,” He shakes his head with nothing but a smile on his face.  
“I knew it was you.”

Josh is the one begging for mercy. Tyler can’t find any piece of himself that wants to give it to him.

”I should be saying sorry,” He shrugs.  
“But it’s not my fault.”

The first round enters Josh’s chest. The second bures itself in his stomach.  
He slumps to his knees in a fashion that makes Tyler’s heart slow and calm.

He drops down too, and let’s Josh feel his last moments gently.  
“I loved you, Josh,” He murmurs. Josh gurgles blood from the side of his mouth and it spills onto a brand new pair of high waisted shorts.  
“But you hurt me too much.”

He cards his fingers through tangled pink locks one more time before he feels Josh’s body still in the silence of death.

Well, he thinks.  
He should probably be going. The neighbors had to have called the police by now.

His fingers slip the gun into Josh’s hand and he steps back inside to clean up, because who wants to be on the run all covered in blood?

Certainly not him.

••

”...Staged as a suicide, Joshua Dun was found by neighbors and police after two gunshots rang out late last night. We’ve identified the main suspect as Tyler Joseph, the man who lived with Dun when the incident happened. Joseph is currently on the run, if you happen to see him please dial the anonymous tip line or 911. He’s presumy armed, dangerous an...”

Tyler chews on soggy cereal and cocks his head at the fuzzy television in front of him.

On the run? He doesn’t think so. He just takes it as it comes.  
Like a vacation.

He’s almost to the west coast. He’s in Las Vegas at the moment and all he can think about is how many people must’ve seen his pretty little face on the television.

He pushes back his lunch and heads for the bathroom on more steady crooked feet.  
Walking more has given him strength. So yes, he can definitely run now if needed.

He’s gotten so far in such little time. He hasn’t slept in days, only running on engery drinks and pure adrenaline.  
The money he stole will be running out soon, but he’s got other forms of payment he knows some won’t refuse.

He’s getting all dolled up now, since he knows his face is probably plastered everywhere on televisions and posters alike.  
He wonders when the investigators find out what really went on behind the walls of that house.

He lines his lips with real red lipstick, coats his eyelashes with real mascara.  
He’s gorgeous.

Gorgeous and stepping out of his hotel room with his hood over his head because he just can’t be too careful.

He smokes and smiles at his feet through his shoes.  
He’s almost fixed himself. Almost.

It wasn’t a bad thing he did. He escaped. He was the victim.  
_Keep telling yourself that_ , his brain chimes.

If there’s one thing he knows for sure, he thinks, when he’s in the back of another taxi with hundred bills clenched in his fist, it’s that once he’s safe-really safe-he’s definitely buying a jar of mayonnaise to celebrate.

Courtesy of Josh.

**Author's Note:**

> hope u guys enjoyed :)
> 
> sorry for another shit ending i just felt i needed to end it on a cutie note


End file.
